Received the following email from my father on a recent criminal case cracked via Google:
Last night there was a documentary on the CBC on a cold case. This cop had a 100% success rate on cold cases and took on the case of a plane that had been hijacked from Thunderbay (en route to Toronto) to Cuba. All he had to go on was the hijacker’s name and a thumb print they managed to lift from a pop can. The hijacker disappeared into the cane fields of Cuba.
His first tool, would you believe, was a Google search on the name. There was only one hit who turned out to a high school history teacher in the states. To cut a long story short: he was the guy. When arrested his comment was “What took you so long?”
The guy was a black social activist in the 60’s who got involved with the Black Panthers and a bank robbery. The robbery went bad and he fled to Canada. Convinced that the law was hot on his trail he boarded a local flight in Thunderbay and, armed with a revolver, demanded the side trip to Cuba. The irony of the story is that flights from Canada to Cuba were, and still are, legal. All he had to do was buy a ticket.
Of course he was tried and convicted of the hijacking and received a three year sentence which he has since served. He is now back in the mainstream and because of his record he could no longer teach.